Posts tagged “BP”

BP may have agreed to the largest criminal settlement in United States history over its ownership of the Macondo well that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, sinking the Deepwater Horizon rig and spilling more than 4.5 million barrels of oil, but the company could yet face billions more in financial responsibility.

Resolving a criminal inquiry into the 2010 oil spill, one of the worst in history, BP agreed last week to pay $4.5 billion in fines, but the ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission investigation could still result in up to $17.6 billion in additional fines and tariffs. The company will now seek to resolve claims made against it for violations of the Clean Water Act, with both the federal government and that of the state of Louisiana pursuing the energy company as cleanup efforts on the Gulf coast continue.

Less than 24 hours after oil exploration company British Petroleum agreed to fines totaling $4.5 billion in the wake of its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, another explosion off the coast of Louisiana is threatening to take a toll on the same region.

The ongoing investigation into the cause of and reaction to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is seeing the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) continue its hard stand against the fuel company, with newly released court documents condemning BP for what it is calling “gross negligence.”

Swiss-based Transocean Ltd, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon platform that caused the spill, is also named by U.S. officials as being responsible alongside BP for a series of testing errors that proved to be costly after a methane gas explosion rocked the rig in question as it dug more than a mile deep off of the coast of Louisiana. The resulting damage would cause the rig to sink within 48 hours, leaving an open well that proceeded to gush more than 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico over an 87-day span.

BP claims that the region has since exhibited signs of promising resilience, but the DOJ is urging the judge in the case to carefully weigh claims made by the oil company concerning the recovery of life in the affected area.

This Week in Energy is a weekly round-up of news making headlines in the world of energy. Most of these stories are posted throughout the week to our Energy Ticker page. The purpose is to stimulate discussion on energy issues. Community members should feel free to turn these into open thread energy discussions. Suggestions and news tips are welcome. I (Sam) can be reached at editor [at] consumerenergyreport [dot] com. Geothermal, Tesla & Fisker, BP, Food vs. Fuel New research funded by Google.org, found that there is three million megawatts of potential geothermal energy — accessible using current technology — below the surface of the United States. That’s ten times the installed capacity of coal power plants in the United… Continue»

Global Energy Growth BP recently released their highly respected annual Statistical Review of World Energy for 2011. Most of the news stories on the report have focused on the exceptionally strong growth in global energy consumption. While that is without a doubt a major story that I will discuss here, I also want to highlight some lesser known facts from the report. Crude Oil The report notes that overall energy consumption growth was 5.6%, the highest rate since 1973. Oil prices averaged the second highest level on record, and therefore oil showed the slowest growth rate at 3.1%, to reach a new record level of 87.4 million b/d. (I am on record as stating that I think global oil production… Continue»

Just a note that this weekend I leave for an extended business trip, with visits to Seattle, Washington D.C., Germany, Massachusetts, Vermont, and California. I will be on the road for about four weeks, but will try to keep to my schedule of posting new columns on Mondays and Thursdays. Next Monday I will have a story up on Virent’s progress in producing gasoline from biomass, and following that I have a number of stories and guest posts to choose from. I was recently asked to participate in an energy roundtable at Focus on China’s Energy Future and the Shale Gas Question. It is no secret that I feel that China’s moves stand to continue sending shock waves through the… Continue»

The following guest essay was written by David Whelpton. David is a private investor in the oil and gas industry. His blog is Knowledge and Investing. Below, David goes through the highlights of the report to the President on the Deepwater Horizon disaster, explaining the commission’s findings of what went wrong, and detailing some specific differences between BP and some other oil companies that may have led to a deficient safety culture. ————————– A Closer Look at The Commission Report on the Deepwater Horizon Disaster The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling has released its report to the President entitled, “Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling.” It is… Continue»

Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, I wrote the following: BP’s Oil Rig Disaster May Bring an End to Support for New Offshore Exploration “I believe the long term implications of this incident will be to exacerbate our slide down the backside of peak oil. Fields take a long time to develop, and fields being developed now may have been producing oil in 5 or 10 years. But I believe this window of opportunity has now closed, and it will be much more difficult to find broad support for expanded drilling.” I held this view because I believed the disaster would sharply shift the debate on drilling, giving drilling opponents fresh ammunition and pushing even… Continue»

Here are my choices for the Top 10 energy related stories of 2010. I can’t remember having such a difficult time squeezing this list down to 10 stories, because there were many important energy stories for 2010. It was hard to cut some of them from the Top 10; so hard that I almost did a Top 15. But I made some difficult choices, and offer my views on the 10 most important energy stories of 2010. Previously I listed a link to Platt’s survey of the Top 10 oil stories of 2010, but my list covers more than just oil. Reviewing my list of Top 10 Energy Related Stories of 2009, I see that I made three predictions. Those… Continue»

Signs of Recovery While it will only be with years of hindsight that we can determine the total environmental impact of the Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, there are encouraging signs that the environmental devastation will be less severe than many had feared. Today a reader sent me this encouraging story: Oil spill area coming back to life More than a dozen scientists interviewed by The Associated Press say the marsh here and across the Louisiana coast is healing itself, giving them hope delicate wetlands might weather the worst offshore spill in US history better than they had feared. Some marshland could be lost, but the amount appears to be small compared with what the coast loses every… Continue»